Ball-pool Hire Wakefield.
It’s a simple concept, but unusually delightful: the Ball Pool.
A ball pool is nothing but a big empty hole with a bunch of plastic spheres dumped inside. But there’s also something strange and special about it: the half-swimming, half-free falling sensation of playing neck-deep in a pool-like space that your brain knows should be filled with water, but instead feels like the inside of a giant gumball machine.
For the better part of 50 years, the ball pit has been a mainstay of the childhood experience for millions of kids across the globe. But whether it’s at an amusement park, a fair or inside a McDonald’s, all of the world’s ball pits can be traced back to one man: its inventor, an English man named Eric McMillan.
McMillan rose from a rough upbringing of toil, labour and urban decay to become the world’s leading designer of children’s play centres. His vision blended colours, textiles and physical exercise, converging in spaces that formed millions of childhood memories.
But the ball pool has a particularly unique origin story of its own. McMillan and his team came up with the idea for the ball pool in San Diego more than 40 years ago, when inspiration struck after looking at a container of pickled onions in the kitchen. “There was a jar of onions, and we were sort of saying: ‘wow, how about if you could crawl through those? And then – ding – we decided we’d try it,” he says.
The first ball pool, filled with 40,000 balls, opened soon after their epiphany. “People just went crazy about it. Thank God for those onions.”
The ‘father of soft play’
Sometimes referred to as the “father of soft play”, McMillan eventually moved to Canada in the 1970's, later inventing things like ball pools for various clients there. One particular job took him to a huge, new urban project called Ontario Place – a futuristic, harbour-side collection of arts venues that even had its own theme tune.
His creations had cropped up in scores of countries, across Canada to the US to the UK, and McMillan had become the go-to designer for all things relating to play.
“Play break downs all kinds of barriers,” he says. “Kids, they’re much more open. You can really affect them.”
But a career of travelling the globe making kids’ dreams come true is a stark contrast to McMillan’s own childhood in Manchester. His involved playing in actual rubble of bombed-out buildings in the wake of World War Two, wearing rags and having his father break into the prison next door to try and scavenge enough coal to make it through winter.
He also felt like he wasn’t “a particularly wanted child” and found life at home “quite cruel” despite being somewhat of a miracle baby – he was born during the Luftwaffe bombing campaign and was thought to have been stillborn, until the midwife dunked him and hot and cold water and his heart started beating.
Growing up, getting out of the house became important as he found play to be “kind of a drug”. But most kids didn’t want to play with him. He said he smelled, and came from the working class, so he often found himself surrounded by “the roughest kids”.
After many twists and turns – labouring at age 15, attending nine schools, battling illiteracy – he nabbed a spot in a trade school, after he drew a painting of a tree that ended up in a local gallery. In that same building was an art school: Suddenly, the tough street kid found himself amid “sons of bureaucrats and bankers – all kind of toffee-nosed. Not the kind of people I would associate with”.
But those art kids ended up being his customers when he got a local job as a waiter – he was saving up money for a motorbike. “It turned out they were really nice people.” They mentioned that the art school was introducing a whole new programme based on the Bauhaus movement from Germany. McMillan managed to get a grant, and then a place in the art school. Before he knew it, he was one of the art kids.
Still, it was severe culture shock. “I spoke differently, and apparently I smelled – because I had toilet habits of the working class.” What’s worse, is that his father, stuck in a labouring job of his own that he didn’t like, found himself bitter with his son, who had seemed like he’d been plucked into the upper-crust, rarefied realm of art school. “We got into terrible fights,” he says.
Toward the end of art school, he lived with friends in Moss Side, a neighbourhood in Manchester that was bombed during the war and which had become a disadvantaged area. The area was a literal dumping ground for cars and trucks.
“Kids would slowly – I would watch them – they would slowly ripe them apart. Just take it apart. I once documented, over a period of about six months, them taking down a building. They actually ripped up an abandoned building.”
His thesis was about children playing in poverty, and he turned to focusing on the kids of Moss Side. But “they were having fun – they were having a great time. There was all this wreckage around, and they were having fun ripping it apart, finding out how it worked. Just basic, taking it apart. Like beetles.”
McMillan invented the ball-pool, we here at Chris's Castles Bouncy Castle Hire Wakefield have TWO popular ball-pools for you to chose from.
1. The Small Baby-ball-pool ideal for babies and toddlers and where space is a premium.
2. The Air-cone ball-pool ideal for children aged 12 years and under with interactive cones.
How to book?
Customers can book online through this product listing. This is our preferred booking method. Alternatively, if you fancy a chat with our friendly office team we take calls between 9am and 6pm Monday to Friday. Please be aware that due to weekends being our busiest time of the week, our office may not be fully staffed and we may not be able to take your call or enquiry. If you would like to email any questions or queries, you can contact us at Contact Us or on 07871 296 276
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